Temple of the Cat

Well, my resolve was to have this whole level pack completed by the time the weekend was over.  It is now two days after that date and I have managed to finish the second level.  Still, it’s better than getting bored and giving up the blog for a year, eh?



We begin, in time-honoured tradition, at the start of the level.

The first area is some kind of zoo that showcases the Egyptian’s amazing barred fence that allows you to view the animals without being able to aim and shoot at them.  It’s like they knew Lara was coming.

Lara, seconds before her head is bitten off by a panther.

Here’s the title character of the piece, the Temple of the Cat.

The mummies take a moment out from trying to eat Lara to join her in running away from a boulder.

These are mummy prints.  Or potatoes.

The ‘Saphire’/’Gold’ key gets another makeover.  Is nothing sacred any more?!

Oh, really, another dark corridor?  Joy.

You can’t truly appreciate the bizarre glory of the walls of the temple in one screenshot, so here’s the animated version.

Continuing the Alice in Wonderland theme set by the last level, here’s Egypt’s answer to the Caterpillar.  Only, now he’s a dragon who doesn’t know how to use his giant cigar.

Just what every adventurer wants to see during her jaunt through Egypt; a wall of mummies.  There are four behind me as well.  That section certainly was a riot.

Looks like somebody got bored of texturing.

Considering Lara leaves the temple with nothing and doesn’t stop anybody from trying to take over the world, I’m forced to conclude that this giant cat statue was the reward for the last two levels.  Well, that was certainly worth all those mummies.

The end!  And it’s goodbye to Egypt until Tomb Raider IV.  Now we have to go back to Atlantis.  Uh…yay?

Return to Egypt

I must admit, I wasn’t exactly overjoyed when my third attempt to install Tomb Raider Gold was successful.  Having finally completed the first Tomb Raider game, I was just a little weary of running around Egypt and Atlantis and wanted to make my way to somewhere with a bit of sky.  However, for completion sake (and the fact that I have never actually played the levels in this game, apart from the start of the first one), I decided to give it a go.

The first level, Return to Egypt (the first part of the “Shadow of the Cat” portion of the game) has gone a big way to making it worth my while.  It was well designed, good-looking and challenging, and has made me impatient to play the rest of the levels.  So let’s get this review up and move on!



So, after killing Natla, Lara returns to Khamoon because she fancies taking one of those cat statues that she saw kicking around.

For whatever reason, Khamoon has flooded.  Also, the Sphinx seems to be winking at her, something it definitely wasn’t doing the first time Lara was here.

I remember admiring this statue for not coming alive and killing me.  Well, it still doesn’t, but it’s fairly independent in that respect.

How on earth did that panther get stuck up there?

Why does that one appear to have dropped a shotgun?

An amazing sight; the sky!  Unlike later Tomb Raiders, however, this “sky” is pretty obviously just a dark texture painted onto the ceiling.  It actually looks better in this screenshot that in the game.

Return to Egypt could just have easily been called “Too Many Crocodiles”.  I’m beginning to go off of them.

Behold, the world’s biggest and deadliest marble run.

This statue didn’t burst into life; it didn’t even bother to look my way.  Snooty cat.

Oh look, it’s our hellish old friend, the panther mummy.

The panther mummy falls through a trap door, and, like some Egyptian-themed Alice in Wonderland, Lara is enticed to go after it.  And there we have the end of the level. It took me a hell of a lot longer to play it than it did to write about it.  Never mind; on to the next chapter!

Sanctuary of the Scion

Remember the multitude of cat mummies in Obelisk of Khamoon?  Sanctuary of the Scion sees that number and raises it fifteen thousand; only, instead of cat mummies, we now have three deadlier and more terrifying varieties of Atlantean.

The beginning of the level gives you the opportunity to bid a fond farewell to all the greenery that appeared in previous levels.  We won’t be seeing any of that again.

You’ve barely even finished waving at the palm trees before two Atlantean…things…jump out at you.  I took many a picture of Wingus and Dingus here, but this one is by far the most nightmare-inducing.

I sure hope you like climbing, because that’s what a good 60% of this level involves.

The Sanctuary is also home to the daddy of all Sphinxes.

Remember how I used to complain about bats a lot back in Peru?  Yeah.  I miss them now.

After the giant Atlantean bat had taken a few shots from my magnums, he swooped over to the Sphinx and did something perverse-looking to the back of his head.

Easter Egg: eating the remains of an Atlantean causes Lara to grow fifty-feet tall.

Oh, I crack myself up.  That was actual a forced-perspective shot from Sanctuary’s invisible ledge (which holds a pair of Uzis, the best weapon in this game).  Still, I bet I could start an urban legend with that screenshot.  Did anybody else fall for the “turn Lara into a dragon” easter egg in Tomb Raider II?

The centaur is back, and he looks as pleased to see Lara as she as to see him, if that exaggerated shoulder slump is anything to go by.

Lara pretends to be an aeroplane.

The ‘Saphire’ key gets a reboot for this level.  Cue debates on whether the name change is a fresh new direction for the key or disrespecting the splendour of the original.

Underwater statue room!  UNDERWATER STATUE ROOM!!! :D
It never fails to brighten my day.

I accidently drowned Lara, and she spent the last few seconds of her life doing some kind of underwater kick-boxing routine.  She may be about to die, but damned if she’s going to leave an unfit-looking corpse.

I’m ashamed to say I had to look at a walkthrough (Stella’s, of course!) for the first time in this playthrough to find this lever.  To be fair, it’s pretty much the same colour as the wall.

Something strange happens when the camera goes underwater to show you something happening; when it cuts back, the screen stays underwater-coloured for a few more seconds, until it goes back to the right shade.  It’s like the visual equivalent of waiting for your ears to pop after swimming.  I choose to believe this was a style choice, not a bug.

Remember how I said that 60% of the level was climbing?  The other 40% was running down this damn corridor.

A trio of Atlanteans are there to greet you at the end of the three-mile corridor, causing Lara to go weak at the knees.

Larson’s back!  He tells you he’s got a  “pain in his brain” from you (it’s called a headache, Larson) and had decided to “shoot you to hell”.

Now, this is how you kill Larson.  No need for dramatically staring at your hands in dismay and acting like you’ve never shot a man before.  Just pump a few dozen rounds into his body and be on your merry way.

 

 

This is what Larson was guarding; the final piece of the Scion.  From the title of the level, you probably should have seen that coming.

The end!  I should probably admit that I did in fact reload a save game and spare Larson’s life, but that was merely to appease the thirteen-year-old Larson fangirl within.

Obelisk of Khamoon

Obelisk of Khamoon is the last in the series of amazingly good-looking levels and juxtapositions pleasant textures with the bone-chilling terror that is the common Egyptian cat mummy.


Here’s the start of the level, as always.  I suppose that, technically, we could call this a room and not a corridor.


There’s four paths here.  Four paths that involve a lot of block shoving to get to, and three of which that offer the combined reward of a medipack.  Thanks, Tomb Raider.


Am I the only one that always opts to push, rather than pull blocks because I feel bad for Lara during the pull animation?  I think it’s the noises she makes.  She sounds like she’s in the last stages of labour.


While playing this level, I discovered something rather useful; if you select a weapon from the menu whilst underwater, Lara takes them out as soon as you’re back on dry land, saving precious seconds that are otherwise used to donate half your health span to an angry animal.


This is the Obelisk, the title character of the level.  The aim is to get to the four artefacts upon its ledges and insert them into some other obelisk.


Lara  spends a lot of her time in this level being chased around by mummies (as one expects in a tomb, I suppose).  I was so blown away by the fantasticness of this screenshot that I immediately took up my pencils and dashed out this sketch based on it.


Apparently that mummy was only pissed off because I ruined his game of Senet.


This is neither the time nor the place to break-dance, Lara.


What surprised me most in this level was that this sarcophagus didn’t burst open and unleashed a painful, mummy-related death when I ventured too close.  I was both relieved and disappointed.


The mummies usually tend to leap around screeching when you wake them up, although sometimes they opt for standing upright and slowly looking around the room in an incredibly horrific manner.  Y’know, like cats do.


This is one of two areas that houses two mummies and and absolutely no rewards for killing them.  I really think such things should be against the law.


With all four artefacts gathered, I was given the opportunity to visit the previous level and insert them into the obelisk there.  Doing so opened the door to the end of the level.


And that concludes another level.  Next we have the majestic Sanctuary of the Scion, which includes more monuments than you can shake a shotgun at.